Dinner with Trump? One crypto bro pulled off 'The Big Short' to get there

Last week, President Donald Trump hosted the top 220 holders of the TRUMP meme coin at a dinner gala. The eponymous meme coin and the subsequent private dinner have created a lot of drama and elicited intense scrutiny over the past few weeks.

The conflict of interests involving the president, Trump barely interacting with any guests, token dumps, disappointing menu, protests — you name it, they got it.

In fact, nearly half of the guests suffered losses by participating in the contest. However, there was one guest who figured out how to secure an entry to the VIP dinner without losing any money.

The Verge, a tech news website, published an interview with the anonymous crypto trader on May 26 in which he discussed pulling "The Big Short" to win an entry to the black-tie dinner.

“Bet you 10 percent of dinner participants are doing this,” he told The Verge. “Everyone knows TRUMP price will fall inevitably as more supply comes online in the future and gets dumped on retail.”

Shorting trades to make it large

The trader's strategy was simple: buy enough TRUMP tokens to make it to the leaderboard and also buy TRUMP perpetual futures in a separate wallet to capitalize on any potential decline in the token's value.

The trader said he moved stablecoins like USDC to his Solana wallet and then bought TRUMP perpetual futures on a decentralized exchange (DEX).

To short the meme coin, he claimed to trade the TRUMP perpetual futures — eventually, the short amount increased in relation to the amount of the TRUMP tokens — on the Hyper Liquid DEX.

When asked if his trades paid off, the guest said, “Um, I basically was flat.”

The trader wished he had the means to be among the top 25 meme coin holders, "I don’t really care about seeing Trump at all. I care more about seeing who else is there, of the top 25."

Trump and his wife, Melania, launched the eponymous meme coins only a few days ahead of his presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.

Both these tokens are Political Finance (PolitiFi) meme coins that are inspired by political figures Though such tokens are generally not officially affiliated with any political figures, TRUMP and MELANIA are officially linked to the president and the first lady.

TRUMP was trading at $12.27 at press time, nearly 85% lower than its all-time high (ATH) of $73.43 that it hit on Jan. 19.

MELANIA, meanwhile, was trading at $0.3451, more than 97% lower than its ATH of $13.05 that it hit on Jan. 20.

Dinner with Trump? One crypto bro pulled off 'The Big Short' to get there first appeared on TheStreet on May 28, 2025

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